I love IBM Servers. However TSM is a big pain. It's complex and most of the stuff I want automated has to be typed in command line sentences. Or so i've experienced so far.
My main gripe is that I have two tape libraries (8 cartrigdes each, 1U size) one at main site and one at DR site. I have 100mbps between sites. I would like some easy button or command to make the primary one send a copy of all its backups or archives to the DR one.
As far as i've been told I have to push each backup, or at least backups per server backed up, with commands every so often. So it's far from automated. I've seen it use in large installations but there's usually one guy or gal dedicated to TSM admin. I can't afford that, either a person or time.
I have a lot of archived documents and want to replicate them too and local support is dragging it's feet on getting that working.
Recently the main tapy library had a failure when one of the tapes cartridge ripped. They replaced the cartridge magazine and the tape but told me all backups with even a byte on that tape were lost. fortunately the archived docs where not there. But it's only a matter of time.
Is there somewhere I could look for more answers, or should I think of replacing TSM and the tape library?
I'm not sure the tape library can work with anything else than TSM. It's a sad thing since for archiving it works very well as tape is relatively inexpensive. I wouldn't want to have to stop using it but I can't see a proper way to protect against tape failure.